Page 59 of Never Bound

And suddenly, my body reawakened. Awash with the sense of—what was it? Time. Time. Time renewed; time regained. I sank into the mattress, the wave of relief that crashed over me pulling me under like the strongest tides.

Because I wasn’t a child anymore. I wasn’t helpless. And leading wasn’t even half of what I was planning to do.

“Oh, Daddy, I—”

“That’s enough.” He managed to force some customary sternness back into his voice. And somehow, that was comforting, too. “I’ve already told you more than you should know. This is the last we’ll ever discuss this. Is that clear?”

I nodded, blinking at my father. My tears of sorrow had retreated just long enough to reappear as tears of relief. Nothing more needed to be discussed. Because for today, it was enough to know that neither of my men was lost. Not yet.

HIM

On my second night at Langer’s, I met the girls.

They were both gorgeous, though far apart in age. The first was no older than me and probably younger, with tawny skin and long black hair, athletic, almost tomboyish, with a loud, merry laugh. The second was older, maybe even in her thirties, though her face had a timeless, ethereal quality. She had pale skin, light blue eyes, and short, wispy, ash-blond hair that created a halo effect around her face. The first wore a tiny floral bikini; the second wore a white one-piece with gold accents and a plunging neckline that showed off the sides of her tits in a way that attracted every eye in the room but somehow managed to still look classy.

These girls moved playfully around Langer’s thirtieth-floor rooftop hot tub like baby otters, the neon lights of the rooftop terrace and the surrounding towers lighting up their bodies in purple and orange and white. They made light, intelligent conversation. They laughed. They joked. They were not conditioned or submissive. They were not brainwashed. They wore actual jewelry, not a slave bracelet in sight. But still, something was wrong.

And worst of all, I was going to be forced to try to figure out what it was after three glasses of top-shelf bourbon, water jets massaging my aching body, a veritable buffet of prescription pain pills courtesy of Langer’s private physician, and yet another cocktail in my hand.

“I knew you secretly liked the finer things,” Langer had said earlier as he handed me the glass.

“Oh, it was never a secret,” I said, to Langer’s approving nod.

The problem was, I’d now wasted forty-eight hours on the finer things, and while I wasn’t going to pretend I didn’t prefer them to being chained up in a storage room thinking I was about to be sent to my death, none of it had brought me closer to Maeve, who the prospect of finding was the only glimmer of hope amid the smoking, bloody wreckage of the last few days. Or helped me forget about the girl who would have to get up and go to class today as if nothing were wrong, to sit at her desk and open her o-chem book at the empty desk next to the empty chair, one that probably looked as much like a memory—or like a dream—to her as it felt like to me.

It all still applies. Nothing’s changed.

She was right, I supposed. Nothing had changed. Except for the fact that we were never going to see each other again.

There was virtually no chance she knew where I was. If her father was smart, he would tell her I’d been sold to the mines. If he wasreallysmart, he would tell her there’d been a cave-in and I was already dead. Anything to lessen the chances she’d try to find me.

I wondered if she had found my message yet.

Across the hot tub, I locked eyes with the younger girl, who had been following my gaze. It stopped at her shoulder, where she wore a long, jagged scar, which she’d appeared to try to cover up with makeup the color of her tawny skin, most of which had now been washed away. She quickly turned. I felt my eyes glaze over as I collapsed into the not-unpleasant muddle of meds, liquor, and the rare privilege of being able to turn my mind off.

Forty-eight hours earlier, the owner of the city’s most coveted downtown penthouse condo found me bruised, bloodied, and drugged-up, standing slumped in front of the elevator like a package of misdirected goods. My first stop had been to “Mr. Langer’s personal physician” to get my wounds treated, and while the pain meds, steroid injection, and God knows what else the doctor had given me were verging on blissful, they were well on their way to knocking me flat on the floor.

Langer snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. “Holy shit, kid, anyone in there? Looks like Dr. Waxler sure gave you the good stuff. He always does.”

“Yes, and I’m ever so grateful for your kindness, sir,” I mumbled, staring at the floor.

“You can cut out that servile shit right now. I know you don’t mean a word of it.”

“Okay, then. Go fuck yourself.”

“That’s better.” Langer crossed his arms. “So what the fuck happened over there, anyway? I leave you alone and you get yourself almost killed defending your lady’s honor? Fucking hell. I thought you were supposed to be smart.”

“Yeah, I thought so, too, so I guess that means we’re both idiots.”

“Well, you look like complete shit, anyway, so I assume you’ll want to sleep it off before I give you the grand tour.” He glanced around the bare entryway, looking puzzled. “You don’t have any belongings or anything?”

I bristled. “For fuck’s sake, I am a belonging. You and I both know that’s the whole reason I’m here. Now if you don’t have any more stupid questions, can you please just throw me in whatever dank, rat-infested cellar you have ready for me and just let me sleep off these meds before you get started on whatever unspeakable torture you’ve got planned? Thanks.”

Langer gave me another bemused look. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but this is a condo, so there is no dank cellar, and the exterminator I had in last week should have taken care of the rat infestation in your bedroom, but—”

“Hold on,” I cut him off. “I don’t understand.”

“What, about the rat infestation, or—”

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